Dr Thorne (22 page)

‘So you've smelt me out, have you, and come for your fee? Ha! ha! ha! Well, I have had a sharpish bout of it, as her ladyship there no doubt has told you. Let her alone to make the worst of it. But, you see, you're too late, man. I've bilked the old gentleman again, without troubling you.'

‘Anyway, I'm glad you're something better, Scatcherd.'

‘Something! I don't know what you call something. I never was better in my life. Ask Winterbones there.'

‘Indeed, now, Scatcherd, you ain't; you're bad enough if you only knew it. And as for Winterbones, he has no business here up in your bedroom, which stinks of gin so, it does. Don't you believe him, doctor; he ain't well, nor yet nigh well.'

Winterbones, when the above ill-natured allusion was made to the aroma coming from his libations, might be seen to deposit surreptitiously beneath the little table at which he sat, the cup with which he had performed them.

The doctor, in the meantime, had taken Sir Roger's hand on the pretext of feeling his pulse, but was drawing quite as much information from the touch of the sick man's skin, and the look of the sick man's eye.

‘I think Mr Winterbones had better go back to the London office,' said he. ‘Lady Scatcherd will be your best clerk for some little time, Sir Roger.'

‘Then I'll be d——if Mr Winterbones does anything of the kind,' said he; ‘so there's an end of that.'

‘Very well,' said the doctor. ‘A man can die but once. It is my duty to suggest measures for putting off the ceremony as long as possible. Perhaps, however, you may wish to hasten it.'

‘Well, I am not very anxious about it, one way or the other,' said Scatcherd. And as he spoke there came a fierce gleam from his eye, which seemed to say – ‘If that's the bugbear with which you wish to frighten me, you will find that you are mistaken.'

‘Now, doctor, don't let him talk that way, don't,' said Lady Scatcherd, with her handkerchief to her eyes.

‘Now, my lady, do you cut it; cut at once,' said Sir Roger, turning hastily round to his better-half; and his better-half, knowing that the province of a woman is to obey, did cut it. But as she went she gave the doctor a pull by the coat sleeve, so that thereby his healing faculties might be sharpened to the very utmost.

‘The best woman in the world, doctor; the very best,' said he, as the door closed behind the wife of his bosom.

‘I'm sure of it,' said the doctor.

‘Yes, till you find a better one,' said Scatcherd. ‘Ha! ha! ha! but good or bad, there are some things which a woman can't understand, and some things which she ought not to be let to understand.'

‘It's natural she should be anxious about your health, you know.'

‘I don't know that,' said the contractor. ‘She'll be very well off. All the whining won't keep a man alive, at any rate.'

There then was a pause, during which the doctor continued his medical examination. To this the patient submitted with a bad grace; but still he did submit.

‘We must turn over a new leaf, Sir Roger; indeed we must.'

‘Bother,' said Sir Roger.

‘Well, Scatcherd; I must do my duty to you, whether you like it or not.'

‘That is to say, I am to pay you for trying to frighten me.'

‘No human nature can stand such shocks as these much longer.'

‘Winterbones,' said the contractor, turning to his clerk, ‘go down, go down, I say; but don't be out of the way. If you go to the public-house, by G——, you may stay there for me. When I take a drop – that is if I ever do, it does not stand in the way of work.' So Mr Winterbones, picking up his cup again, and concealing it in some way beneath his coat flap, retreated out of the room, and the two friends were alone.

‘Scatcherd,' said the doctor, ‘you have been as near your God, as any man ever was who afterwards ate and drank in this world.'

‘Have I, now?' said the railway hero, apparently somewhat startled.

‘Indeed you have; indeed you have.'

‘And now I'm all right again?'

‘All right! How can you be all right, when you know that your limbs refuse to carry you? All right! why the blood is still beating round your brain with a violence that would destroy any other brain but yours.'

‘Ha! ha! ha!' laughed Scatcherd. He was very proud of thinking himself to be differently organised from other men. ‘Ha! ha! ha! Well, and what am I to do now?'

The whole of the doctor's prescription we will not give at length. To some of his ordinances Sir Roger promised obedience; to others he objected violently, and to one or two he flatly refused to listen. The great stumbling-block was this, that total abstinence from business for two weeks was enjoined; and that it was impossible, so Sir Roger said, that he should abstain for two days.

‘If you work,' said the doctor, ‘in your present state, you will certainly have recourse to the stimulus of drink; and if you drink, most assuredly you will die.'

‘Stimulus! Why, do you think I can't work without Dutch courage?'

‘Scatcherd, I know that there is brandy in the room at this moment, and that you have been taking it within these two hours.'

‘You smell that fellow's gin,' said Scatcherd.

‘I feel the alcohol working within your veins,' said the doctor, who still had his hand on his patient's arm.

Sir Roger turned himself roughly in the bed so as to get away from his Mentor, and then he began to threaten in his turn.

‘I'll tell you what it is, doctor; I've made up my mind, and I'll do it. I'll send for Fillgrave.'

‘Very well,' said he of Greshamsbury, ‘send for Fillgrave. Your case is one in which even he can hardly go wrong.'

‘You think you can hector me, and do as you like because you had me under your thumb in other days. You're a very good fellow, Thorne, but I ain't sure that you are the best doctor in all England.'

‘You may be sure I am not; you may take me for the worst if you will. But while I am here as your medical adviser, I can only tell you the truth to the best of my thinking. Now the truth is this, that another bout of drinking will in all probability kill you; and any recourse to stimulus in your present condition may do so.'

‘I'll send for Fillgrave –'

‘Well, send for Fillgrave, only do it at once. Believe me at any rate in this, that whatever you do, you should do at once. Oblige me in this; let Lady Scatcherd take away that brandy bottle till Dr Fillgrave comes.'

‘I'm d——if I do. Do you think I can't have a bottle of brandy in my room without swigging?'

‘I think you'll be less likely to swig it if you can't get at it.'

Sir Roger made another angry turn in his bed as well as his half-paralysed limbs would let him; and then, after a few moments' peace, renewed his threats with increased violence.

‘Yes; I'll have Fillgrave over here. If a man be ill, really ill, he should have the best advice he can get. I'll have Fillgrave, and I'll have that other fellow from Silverbridge to meet him. What's his name? – Century.'

The doctor turned his head away; for though the occasion was serious, he could not help smiling at the malicious vengeance with which his friend proposed to gratify himself.

‘I will; and Rerechild too. What's the expense? I suppose five or six pound apiece will do it; eh, Thorne?'

‘Oh, yes; that will be liberal I should say. But, Sir Roger, will you allow me to suggest what you ought to do? I don't know how far you may be joking –'

‘Joking!' shouted the baronet; ‘you tell a man he's dying and joking in the same breath. You'll find I'm not joking.'

‘Well, I dare say not. But if you have not full confidence in me –'

‘I have no confidence in you at all.'

‘Then why not send to London? Expense is no object to you.'

‘It is an object; a great object.'

‘Nonsense! Send to London for Sir Omicron Pie:
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send for some man whom you will really trust when you see him.'

‘There's not one of the lot I'd trust as soon as Fillgrave. I've known Fillgrave all my life, and I trust him. I'll send for Fillgrave and put my case in his hands. If anyone can do anything for me, Fillgrave is the man.'

‘Then in God's name send for Fillgrave,' said the doctor. ‘And now good-bye, Scatcherd; and as you do send for him, give him a fair chance. Do not destroy yourself by more brandy before he comes.'

‘That's my affair, and his; not yours,' said the patient.

‘So be it: give me your hand, at any rate, before I go. I wish you well through it, and when you are well, I'll come and see you.'

‘Good-bye – good-bye; and look here, Thorne, you'll be talking to Lady Scatcherd downstairs, I know; now, no nonsense. You understand me, eh? no nonsense, you know.'

D
R THORNE
left the room and went downstairs, being fully aware that he could not leave the house without having some communication with Lady Scatcherd. He was no sooner within the passage than he heard the sick man's bell ring violently; and then the servant, passing him on the staircase, received orders to send a mounted messenger immediately to Barchester. Dr Fillgrave was to be summoned to come as quickly as possible to the sick man's room, and Mr Winterboncs was to be sent up to write the note.

Sir Roger was quite right in supposing that there would be some words between the doctor and her ladyship. How, indeed, was the doctor to get out of the house without such, let him wish it ever so much? There were words; and these were protracted, while the doctor's cob was being ordered round, till very many were uttered which the contractor would probably have regarded as nonsense.

Lady Scatcherd was no fit associate for the wives of English baronets; – was no doubt by education and manners much better fitted to sit in their servants' halls; but not on that account was she a bad wife or a bad woman. She was painfully, fearfully anxious for that husband of hers, whom she honoured and worshipped, as it behoved her to do, above all other men. She was fearfully anxious as to his life, and faithfully believed, that if any man could prolong it, it was that old and faithful friend whom she had known to be true to her lord since their early married troubles.

When, therefore, she found that he had been dismissed, and that a stranger was to be sent for in his place, her heart sank low within her.

‘But, doctor,' she said, with her apron up to her eyes, ‘you ain't going to leave him, are you?'

Dr Thorne did not find it easy to explain to her ladyship that medical etiquette would not permit him to remain in attendance on her husband, after he had been dismissed and another physician called in his place.

‘Etiquette!' said she, crying. ‘What's etiquette to do with it when a man is a-killing hisself with brandy?'

‘Fillgrave will forbid that quite as strongly as I can do.'

‘Fillgrave!' said she. ‘Fiddlestick! Fillgrave, indeed!'

Dr Thorne could almost have embraced her for the strong feeling of thorough confidence on the one side, and thorough distrust on the other, which she contrived to throw into those few words.

‘I'll tell you what, doctor; I won't let the messenger go. I'll bear the brunt of it. He can't do much now he ain't up, you know. I'll stop the boy; we won't have no Fillgraves here.'

This, however, was a step to which Dr Thorne would not assent. He endeavoured to explain to the anxious wife, that after what had passed he could not tender his medical services till they were again asked for.

‘But you can slip in as a friend, you know; and then by degrees you can come round him, eh? can't you now, doctor? And as to the payment –'

All that Dr Thorne said on the subject may easily be imagined. And in this way, and in partaking of the lunch which was forced upon him, an hour had nearly passed between his leaving Sir Roger's bedroom and putting his foot into the stirrup. But no sooner had the cob begun to move on the gravel-sweep before the house, than one of the upper windows opened, and the doctor was summoned to another conference with the sick man.

‘He says you are to come back, whether or no,' said Mr Winterbones, screeching out of the window, and putting all his emphasis on the last words.

‘Thorne! Thorne! Thorne!' shouted the sick man from his sickbed, so loudly that the doctor heard him, seated as he was on horseback out before the house.

‘You're to come back, whether or no,' repeated Winterbones, with more emphasis, evidently conceiving that there was a strength of injunction in that ‘whether or no' which would be found quite invincible.

Whether actuated by these magic words, or by some internal process of thought, we will not say; but the doctor did slowly, and as though unwillingly, dismount again from his steed, and slowly retrace his steps into the house.